


everything stays where you left it

by piggy09



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17485988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: [SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 48]“Do you want to know why I steal shiny things?” Nott says.





	everything stays where you left it

**Author's Note:**

> Do you ever think about how Nott left her son and Caleb killed his parents and then do you ever just get sad? I don’t, personally, me personally I’ve never been sad once in my entire life,

Late night in their hard-earned inn room: Caleb counting coins (“—two – three – four – five—”) and Nott turning out her pockets and lining up stolen buttons and baubles and bracelets. _Dear Luke_ , she thinks to herself. She takes the bright green button, she takes five copper. (“—nine – ten – eleven—”) _Dear Luke, Do you remember when your father and I took you out into the center of the village, after the rain, and you laughed at how green the grass was—_

“—fifteen – sixteen – seventeen—”

Nott has existed with Caleb in a delicate state of balance, where she doesn’t ask him things and in return he asks her precisely nothing. She still knows very little about him; she knows he was in prison with her, she knows about his cat, she knows he’s smart as anything but doesn’t want schooling, she knows he’s obsessed with books, she knows he cries to himself after he thinks she’s fallen asleep.

Luke is a line of six buttons on the ground in front of her, memories reproduced in flashes of shiny metal that can’t come close to the colors of remembered grass and sky and home. She loses more of him every day, just by not being there.

“Caleb?” she says.

“—twenty-one – twenty-two – twenty-three—”

She turns her head to look at him. His shoulders are hunched; his hair is pushed roughly out of his face. He is intent on his handful of coppers. Looking at him is like a gut-punch of affection, and she doesn’t know how much of it is for him and how much of it is misplaced. _Dear Luke: Is someone looking after you? I know your mother is gone, and I know you don’t know where she is, but is there someone to make sure you get enough sleep and that you’re eating right? Is someone taking care of you?_

Caleb’s eyes are so unbelievably blue. The rest of him is sallow and bent-over and sad, but his eyes are so blue. She watches those blue eyes watch the coins until Caleb gets to twenty-eight, nods to himself, and shuffles the lot back into his coin purse.

“Caleb,” she says again.

Caleb blinks, looks at her. “Yes?”

“Why do you count them?”

“Oh,” Caleb says. He looks down at his hands – poorly-bandaged, like Caleb’s arms, like all of Nott – and clenches and unclenches his fingers. “I don’t know,” he says. He’s lying.

Nott pulls herself to her feet, takes one – two – three steps across the room and then sits down next to Caleb. She puts her (ugly) (goblin) hand on his hand. “It’s alright,” she says. “You don’t have to tell me. How many do we have?”

“Twenty-eight,” Caleb mutters. He turns his hand over so his palm is pressed against hers, and slowly raises his other hand to press to the top of Nott’s hand. His hands are enfolding hers; they’re so big. What it feels like to hold someone’s tiny hand between two of yours and know that – and know – _Dear Luke_ —

“I,” Caleb says. “I need to know that they are there. Does that make sense? I don’t, I don’t think that I made them up, or – I am usually sure that I did not make them up, but – I need, I need to make sure. That they are here, that I can hold them, that they aren’t going away.”

_Dear Luke, Sometimes things go away and I’m sorry that they do and I’m sure they don’t mean to but sometimes there isn’t any other choice except to—_

“Do you want to know why I steal shiny things?” Nott says.

Caleb shakes his head, softly. “You don’t need to tell me,” he says. “This isn’t business, you don’t have to give secrets up just because I’ve told you things about myself. I don’t – I don’t want you to feel like you have to, like you’re not safe here. I.” He lifts one of his hands up to anxiously scratch at the back of his head. His hair ruffles up.

“I want to tell you,” Nott says.

“Okay,” Caleb says quietly. He cups her hand in both of his again. “Why do you steal things, Nott?”

“I’m scared of losing what I already have,” Nott says. “And I don’t have very much, besides memories, and – sometimes it seems like if I steal enough things that remind me of something, it will be like having that memory back. Only stronger. And then I can hold it – and then I can hold them. And they won’t go away.

“Do you know what I mean?” she says. Her voice is weak and crackling. She misses Yeza. She misses her son. She misses Caleb already, even though he’s right here with her. How would she steal him, if she could? She’d reach up and rip pieces off the sky, she’d steal flickers from the heart of a fire. Impossible things.

“Yes,” Caleb says. “I know what you mean.” She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted him to say exactly that until he said it. She studies his face to keep from crying – the furrow in his brow, those white-hot eyes darting around in thought. “I have a good memory,” he says slowly. “An excellent memory, actually. I know it isn’t a lot to offer, but if you ever forget something from – from our time together. You can ask me, I will know.”

“Thank you, Caleb,” Nott says. Her voice cracks a bit. “That’s an amazing offer. I didn’t know you could remember that much.”

“I remember everything,” Caleb says. His voice is light and brittle enough to be carried away on the breeze of his breathing.

“I wish I could,” Nott says. “I’d like to have everything with me.”

Caleb is silent for a moment; his breathing is rapid, shallow. “You do,” he says. “In your pockets. Pieces of it, _ja_? The brightest – the best and brightest parts, you have them there. Better than remembering. You reach out and you take what you want to keep and you don’t have to keep the rest of it, only the beautiful parts.”

“I suppose,” Nott says. _Dear Luke_ , she writes in her brain, and then stops. Even in an imagined letter she can’t tell her son that his face gets a little blurrier every day, a little less real. She remakes it in ribbons and stones but it’s not the same. If she gave Luke to Caleb, Caleb would carry him – but she’s not giving Luke to Caleb, the same way Caleb wouldn’t give Nott any of his ghosts.

Caleb squeezes Nott’s hand between his and then lets it go, slowly. Nott stands up, goes back to her sad little hoard and rummages through it until she finds the unbelievable blue handkerchief she took from a rich man’s pocket. She holds it between her hands; in her memory she looks up to the sky, and Luke says _mama_ , and she remembers the sound.

In reality she goes and sits back down next to Caleb. She holds out the handkerchief. “This is you,” she tells him.

“That is me?” Caleb says. He reaches out and touches the tips of his fingers to the cloth.

“Yes,” Nott says. “Your eyes are fantastic, you know.”

Caleb shakes his head around in what could charitably be called a nod. He reaches out and pets the handkerchief again, like it’s a cat – except Caleb isn’t that gentle with Frumpkin. He never thinks Frumpkin will fall apart.

“Thank you,” Caleb says. “I’m honored.”

“It isn’t very much,” Nott says. She puts the handkerchief back in her pocket. _Dear Luke: Sometimes things go away and I’m sorry that they do and I’m sure they don’t mean to but sometimes there isn’t any other choice except to change. Sometimes the only way to survive is to change, Luke – and the things you love will come back to you someday, even if they’re in different shapes. Even if they’re unrecognizable._

“It’s a lot,” Caleb says. He reaches into his pocket; Nott hears the jingling of his fingers turning through coppers.

“Do you need to count them again?” she says.

“No,” Caleb says. “No, I remember how many there are.”

“Could you count them for me,” Nott says. “Just so I don’t forget.”

She feels Caleb’s eyes on her, and she lifts her own eyes to meet them. He always looks so sad, her Caleb. She wishes he didn’t look quite that sad all the time.

“Okay,” Caleb says quietly. He lifts out a handful of coins and puts them on the ground one at a time. “One,” he says, and then “two,” and then “three – four – five—”

**Author's Note:**

> Let's go in the garden  
> You'll find something waiting  
> Right there where you left it  
> Lying upside down
> 
> When you finally find it  
> You'll see how it's faded  
> The underside is lighter  
> When you turn it around  
> \--"Everything Stays," Marceline the Vampire Queen
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
